DJI and Hasselblad Introduce A5D-M600 Aerial Photography Platform

By Graham K. Rogers

Hasselblad has been busy recently with the release of its new flagship H6D-50c and H6D-100c cameras, followed by its mirrorless HX1D that uses the same 50 MP CMOS as in the H6D-50c.

Back in May, I had a brief chance to try the H6D-50c and was quite impressed with the quality of the images I was able to produce. Part of this was down to the superb autofocus system, but the CMOS with its 50 megapixels certainly played a major part. I experimented later with some of the photographs and enlarging them to a massive size, still had small sections of the image quite sharp. Far higher quality than my usual DSLR (and certainly better than the iPhone).

With the HX1D mirrorless camera, I would therefore expect output almost as good (depending on lenses) as the H6D-50c and (again) far better than any of my current cameras could produce.

Hasselblad has taken another step forward in the use of technology today as it has joined with DJI to use the A5D Aerial camera that was released last June with DJI's professional Matrice 600 (M600) flying platform and the A5D-M600 bundle is the first joint product following DJI's recent investment in Hasselblad.

With its advanced aerial optics and sensors together with what is claimed to be one of the world's most reliable aerial platforms, this is intended to be a package that will appeal to surveyors and mappers as well as to aerial photographers. There may also be some interesting law enforcement applications with such a sophisticated tool.

Hasselblad A5D installed in DJI M600 Aerial Platform

The information from Hasselblad tells us that the "M600 is fully compatible with DJI's advanced gimbal system the Ronin-MX. It comes fully equipped with 6 intelligent batteries, A3 flight controller, Lightbridge 2 Professional HD transmission system, a dust-proof propulsion system and powerful app control."

The standard A5D was released with 40MP (CCD), 50MP (CMOS), and 60MP (CCD) sensors. The A5D-M600 is reportedly fitted with a modified HC 3.5/50mm-II lens (with the focus locked on infinity). More information about the bundle is available on the Hasselblad site

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. He is now continuing that in the Bangkok Post supplement, Life. He can be followed on Twitter (@extensions_th)